Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-20-2025
Abstract
Nature uses fibrous structures for sensing and structural functions as observed in hairs, whiskers, stereocilia, spider silks, and hagfish slime thread skeins. Here, we demonstrate multi-nozzle printing of 3D hair arrays having freeform trajectories at a very high rate, with fiber diameters as fine as 1.5 µm, continuous lengths reaching tens of centimeters, and a wide range of materials with elastic moduli from 5 MPa to 3500 MPa. This is achieved via 3D printing by rapid solvent exchange in high yield stress micro granular gel, leading to radial solidification of the extruded polymer filament at a rate of 2.33 μm/s. This process extrudes filaments at 5 mm/s, which is 500,000 times faster than meniscus printing owing to the rapid solidification which prevents capillarity-induced fiber breakage. This study demonstrates the potential of 3D printing by rapid solvent exchange as a fast and scalable process for replicating natural fibrous structures for use in biomimetic functions.
Recommended Citation
Eom W, Hossain MT, Parasramka V, et al. Fast 3D printing of fine, continuous, and soft fibers via embedded solvent exchange. Nat Commun. 2025;16(1):842. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-55972-1
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
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Other Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology Commons, Other Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons, Structural Biology Commons
Comments
This article was originally published in Nature Communications, volume 16, in 2025. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-55972-1